Oppy has finished her studies of the Chocolate Hills, and has moved off to the left, resuming her circumnavigation of Concepcion Crater. She’s now close to the most obvious “ray” of impact debris, or ejecta, that streaks away from the crater, and seeing some truly spectacular rocksm which I’ll show you shortly. First, where exactly is Oppy now?

Well, thanks to UMSF member “Tesheiner” I can show you! Tesh has created a special file for Google Earth that allows you to follow, very accurately, Oppy’s trek across Meridiani. And using this file we can see exactly where Oppy was and has just driven to.

From that pic (much easier to see if you click on it to enlarge it) you can see that Oppy spent quite a while at the Chocolate Hills and has now moved on, heading towards that dark ray of ejecta. Now she’s stopped and she’s been staring at her feet again, taking some colour pictures of the rocks closest to her. I’ve taken these images, stitched them together and colourised them to make what I think, honestly, is one of the best Mars images I’ve ever made. Take a look, and you really will have to click on the image to enlarge it to see it in all its glory…

Let’s take a look at some of the most fascinating areas of that image… there are some seriously interesting rocks here…

Just look at those rocks! What a fascinating place this is! I really, really want Oppy to lift her head and take a look at some of the big, dark rocks in the ejecta ray, but the rocks beneath and between Oppy’s wheels are just as intriguing…